Mary’s Child
This is my translation of “Marienkind”, a remarkable fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. The original can be seen here. I took minor liberties with the translation in the service of...
View ArticleAs the hour bows down to touch me
My translation of Rilke’s first poem from The Book of Monastic Life. The original may be found here. As the hour bows down to touch me with a clear, metallic toll, shaken by my senses, I feel, I can...
View ArticleI am, unquiet one.
I’m preparing a translation of Rilke’s Das Buch vom Mönchischen Leben – here is “Ich bin, du Ängstlicher. Hörst du mich nicht”. I am, unquiet one. Do you not hear me, with all my senses hurtling toward...
View ArticleEpigram for Poetry
by Heiner Müller, translated by Mesocosm Pegasus served the brave and honest of the poets of old Carried them wingedly away over the terrestrial dust. Today, busy with making the earth more palatable,...
View ArticleHeidelberg
by Hölderlin, translated by Mesocosm Long have I loved you – wanted, for my own delight, To call you mother, and to offer you an artless song, You, the loveliest town that I have seen in...
View ArticleOphelia
by Georg Heym, translated by Mesocosm I A nest of young water rats in her hair, And ringed hands like fins In the flood, so she pushes through the shadows of the great forests that come to rest in...
View ArticleMnemosyne, by Friedrich Hölderlin
Completed around 1803, Hölderlin’s “Mnemosyne” anticipates many of the themes of Modernism by over a century. I’ve given my translation below, but as with all translations of great poems, much is lost....
View ArticleHeiner Müller on “Hamlet Machine,” 1977
“I want to live in my veins, in the marrow of my bones, in the labyrinth of my skull.” – Die Hamletmaschine The following is my original translation of German playwright Heiner Müller’s reflections on...
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